Discussion The Great Dreaming Thread

[Makko]

Do you dream?

What do you dream about?

How do you relate to your dreaming experience?

I live to dream. I dream day and night, when awake and when asleep. I dream in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness when drifting out of the sleep in the morning and falling asleep in the evening. I dream at home, at work, at the store, at the restaurant and at the hairdresser. I dream when I'm alone and when in company, when idle and when busy, when talking and when listening, when reading and when writing, when excited and when downcast, when rested and when tired. Nothing will stop me from dreaming and from putting the dreaming above all else. The rest of my life is only for supporting, nourishing and developing the dreaming into something ever more vivid, ever more bizarre, ever more mysterious and even more wonderful. My flesh is only a vessel for invisible things. If I could kill my body and keep my dreams, I would.

In the morning, when slowly waking up, my dreams are warm. The worlds are lush and beautiful and inhabited by people I would love to meet. The warmth courses through my body and lifts up my mind, it carries me like a cloud. I get up and start my day immersed in the energy of twilight between sleep and wakefulness. It's a source of power. Through the day the soft warmth dissipates, leaving behind a core of sharp ice. The dreams don't stop, but the beauty peels away. I transform into, or rather realise that I am, an alien creature transported into reality against my will. I'm a deranged monster fighting my way through, looking for a way out. I notice every nook and cranny in nature and architecture where I could hide, and every angle from where I could ambush my human prey. As night falls and I go to bed I understand that I'm helplessly stuck, I want to scream and cry, I want to tear through the smothering of fabric reality with the claws and teeth I've grown through the day. When I finally fall asleep, the puzzle of my dreams and lived experiences jumbles together into combinations I could never think of while awake, spinning me around, showing me visions that convince me the brain is not so much a factory of thoughts as it is a radio mast picking up signals from somewhere far away. Towards morning, the warmth returns. I don't know where it keeps coming from, but the positive energy pours into me, infuses me with color and charges me for a new day. I'd be a low-functioning depressed mess if it weren't for this, so I'm eternally grateful to whatever distant space station keeps sending me these waves.

No one else can see or even suspect this, of course. I've mastered the divide between dreaming and reality. I can fulfill my real life tasks without difficulty. I can work, I can be social, I can solve complex real-world problems, and meanwhile I will dream. I'm two people at once. The real me, a fine-tuned robot on autopilot, and the dreaming me, a disembodied dimensional traveler.

If this sounds fairy tale, that's because it is. I'm half mechanical corpse and the other half is fairy tale. Reality is the death and dreaming is the life. There's nothing inbetween. I'm convinced that if anything will make me take the step to suicide, it will be the loss of dreams.

What are your experiences with dreaming?

 

[Callie Arcale]

You write so beautifully, words just roll on the screen like waves on a calm sea. I can really tell you are a dreamer.

I think I know what you mean because I used to live inside my fantasies. Work, college, real life, they were all distractions in between my lucid dreams. Sadly, I have lost the ability to conjure up images, places and people. Dreams shun me. They do not come to me anymore, however much I beg and pray. My barren mind is a scorched desert where not a single drop of rain falls.

 

[signifying nothing]

Dreams are where I go to feel alive. Many of the best experiences I have had have been in my dreams. A place to become unfixed from reality, to experience without consequences. I would be devastated if I could no longer dream.

I used to daydream quite a lot, but am unable to do so very often these days. I think that's because I am in a better living situation now than I was for many years, when all I wanted to do was escape reality and the anxiety of existence. I also lost hope that any of the fantasies I imagined would become a reality, so their lure and power has dissipated with that realisation.

Now I try to face the reality of waking life as it presents itself, and change what I can to make the anxiety of living with who and what I am more bearable.

 

[kovkay]

My daydreams are mainly stuff that I would like to happen in ten or twenty years. They're kind of realistic. What I mean by that is, there's no fantasy or scifi elements. I just mainly picture I would like my future to look like.

In terms of dreams during sleep - I can maybe remember one good dream I had. The rest are nightmares and bizarre collections of nonsense. None are too vivid, but I had a couple of experiences with astral projection.

 

[Squiddy]

My dreams fuck me over a lot. I mostly dream about my bullies, but I've also dreamt of being stapled to a telephone pole and shot in the head about 6 times before being revived

 

[rata1]

i do not drem very often, but i like it. even if mostly my dreams are always the same with other peoplebu tthe same circumstances, mostly negative. even negative i like dreaming. it is like another world, it is like leaving for some hours this rl and discover a bit more of ourlselfs

 

[BeansOfRequirement]

I dream when I sleep and then forget about or discard the dream as garbage. When not doing anything cognitively demanding I tend to day-think rather than daydream, going over practical matters, thinking about the forum, suicidal ideation and so on. I don't have aphantasia, though, I can generate vivid daydreams that override reality. Yesterday I got myself to cry for half an hour by forcing myself to daydream about having a girlfriend.

I notice every nook and cranny in nature and architecture where I could hide, and every angle from where I could ambush my human prey.

*Pounces on you* *bites your neck* "Caught you, human, uwu."

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

During the day, I dream a lot about having a loving wife and getting to spend the day with them in various ways. Who the wife is varies but it's all very unrealistic.

My dream when I was a child was to become an animator or cartoonist of some kind. I always felt like cartoons were the only way for the world to make sense to me. I longed to be able to both educate people in ways that go beyond typical educational programming and to share my own vision of the world with people. It turns out that this was actually just myself cruelly disguising my true intentions which were just to escape from the world. I'm not creative at all I just rip stuff off from lots of things I watched. I'm also horrible at drawing. I only doodled in class all the time because I'd rather do my shitty drawings than learn anything useful. When I got to college and actually took animation as a major it turned out I hated drawing whenever it became something I had to do.

Also in college, I used to have constant terrifying nightmares depicting my infatuation target as an eldritch horror twisting my mind and steering me both to and away from her as a form of torture. In the nightmares, she was often times punishing me for liking her in the first place when I was so beneath her that I often got no sleep because of it. I became so sleep deprived I started hallucinating a lot which included seeing her or hearing her voice sometimes.

When I had a job in a fast food restaurant, my dreams started to become way more mundane. I would literally dream just about going to work, having a normal day, then going back to sleep. My dreams got so boring I began to get them confused with real life like I would remember people telling me things they told me in the dream but never actually said to me in real life.

Nowadays I try to dream a lot less because when I do, I dream a lot about ways to punish myself for things I've done. Good dreams also piss me off because they make waking up feel that much more painful. At night, when I'm not distracting myself, I tend to linger on the many ways I've screwed up and what I should have done to fix them. Ultimately my conscious dreams are for absolution just like in the cheesy Sonic song that serves as my avatar's theme song. I know that for me this is ultimately unachievable because just like I've mentioned before, I'm beyond redemption and I'm 99% beyond even getting the one thing that could turn my life around and force me to just forgive myself. Oh well.

 

[Lmd]

Wow...that was really beautiful.

My dreams are always related to: discovering things or fighting to the death.

The first one keeps me a little more active and excited when I wake up because it leaves me thinking about all the things that I haven't discovered yet and everything that surrounds me and I still don't understand. It makes me want to learn and observe around me. Sadly, it's difficult for me to stay focused so I end up rambling or thinking how great it would be if there were ghosts, aliens, mutants, etc, and what exactly would happen in those situations if they were involved, like pushing me to "something else" because what I see isn't enough.

The second one it's always the same. I have lucid dreams and I love to feel how I move, when I run, I swim, I do any kind of physical exercise and it doesn't seem like I'm an 80-year-old lady like I am irl. This makes me want to join some kind of martial art and start to take action and meet people with whom I can fight or defend myself from others and have control of my body. Then my depression comes out to remind me that I get exhausted with everything because I should be dead.

 

[kukukoko]

I do not remember many dreams but when I do it's usually just a sequence of situations with petty problems I worry about. Say: I cook, but the food gets burned; next thing I go to a friend, but can't open the door because it's jammed then I'm suddenly walking with my dog but it runs away because it's unleashed,........

So it's usually just a sequence of random problems. Sometimes I have chilled dreams, but it's like maybe every fiftch I remember and I remember my dreams maybe once a week.

 

[Bootleg Astolfo]

Usually dreams are a blend of my nightmarish life and very weirdly overly detailed gore. Thanks brain, very cool, i couldnt just dream about being a giant sentient biscuit that takes over the world by sucking up all of britain's teasupply or something, but nooooo that wouldve been only weird and not traumatising.

 

[Breakout92]

You're a great writer OP.

I daydream all the time. I imagine where life could go in the future, what my current life could be like if things had gone differently, what things I wished I could have done differently as a kid. They're really vivid. It's like they actually happen. I have been talking to someone who I'm romantically interested in and it's just amazing imagining the future we could have together. Even if it's not realistic or possible. I wish it could happen though.

But I rarely dream at night when sleeping. I don't even get a full night's sleep most of the time. Last night I did dream for the first time in weeks, it was a dream that I was getting my hair cut which I haven't done in years.

 

[shijsrzh]

I daydream all the time. If you could call it that. It's more like my usual excessive worrying and anxiety driven thinking taking place.
As for the night: I haven't had a dream in 6 years. I wonder sometimes why it is that I don't dream.

 

[Makko]

I just realised that the real me is just my daydream's daydream.

 

[BeansOfRequirement]

I just realised that the real me is just my daydream's daydream.

Rinnegan Makko within five years, this is epic.

 

[Celerity]

Like most people, my dreams aren't as vivid as an adult, but boy do they come back with a vengeance in times of stress. I suppose it has to do with when I am waking up during the sleep cycle and maybe the content of the dreams. All I know is that I am waking up from chasing or fighting dreams more often and getting less sleep.

Occasionally, I have weird ones where it feels like my brain is trying to solve my problems and ongoing questions. A few weeks back, I had a long one in a weird modern church that resembled a stereotypical cult. A pastor of some kind in the church used a broken coffee maker as a metaphor for enlightenment. I remember having a very specific impression of what his meaning was when I woke up. I'll be damned if I know what the hell my subconscious was going for now.

Today, I woke up angry with someone who wronged me in the past. I was under the misapprehension that I had moved on. Yay for self knowledge?

 

[Kaisler]

Lately I've been having some pretty surreal dreams. This one time I had a dream where I'm a bug (fly) and we're fighting in a bug war and one of my best friend died. I guess we're in the air force in that dream ? Fucking hell it was so surreal, but then I woke up and I got depressed again cause I was still breathing.

 

[Pure]

My dreams are typically nightmares of things and people I can't even remember when I wake up. The ones I remember are typically my being forced back to my high school and being stuck there in a loop until I wake up. It's been 10 years since I entered that school.

My daydreams are typically based in the series I'm entrenched with at that moment. I'm faster, stronger, more beautiful, and more mysterious than I am in reality. Lately I've been experiencing a severe bout of limerence and now my daydreams are nightmares for pining for something so close to becoming reality but yet so far away.

@Makko I recall you stating you experience severe anhedonia. I'm wondering if all your feelings and pleasures are just channeled entirely to your dreams instead of being nonexistent as anhedonia implies?

 

[meetapple]

My dreams expound upon issues in my life. For instance, I think a lot about how I didn't live my childhood fully. I dream about being in classes in which I am several years older than the other students. They are all smarter than me and are destined to be successful unlike me. There is a recurring dream in which I miss one of my final exams because I had never put it on my calendar which actually happened to me in college. I also have a dream in which I have been assigned papers to write but can't because I fund out too late about them.

My aunt passed away ten years after developing cancer. Sometimes I dream that she is alive as if to shame me for not caring about her death enough.

BTW are you Grendel?

 

[Makko]

@Makko I recall you stating you experience severe anhedonia. I'm wondering if all your feelings and pleasures are just channeled entirely to your dreams instead of being nonexistent as anhedonia implies?

Unfortunately that's not really how it works. Being an obsessive dreamer is like you're on fire but instead of rolling on the ground or pouring water on yourself, your response is to sit around and shoot heroin while you burn.

BTW are you Grendel?

How did you make this connection?

 

[meetapple]

Unfortunately that's not really how it works. Being an obsessive dreamer is like you're on fire but instead of rolling on the ground or pouring water on yourself, your response is to sit around and shoot heroin while you burn.


How did you make this connection?

I'm a deranged monster fighting my way through, looking for a way out. I notice every nook and cranny in nature and architecture where I could hide, and every angle from where I could ambush my human prey.

I want to tear through the smothering of fabric reality with the claws and teeth I've grown through the day.

 

[Panna]

My dreams typically consist of longing although they can also consist of simply peaceful things. I remember once vividly dreaming about being in a brick walled underground parking lot of all places and just running around feeling excited and free. I suppose it was from my desire to escape the us. Outside this, they usually involve homes surrounded by thick vibrant green as a cool wind pours in from the outside, causing me to grab something nice to withstand the chill with warmth. Comfy dreams are good dreams for me

 

[OrcWitch]

I had a strange dream last week. I am not sure if it is related to my experience of being attacked while laying in bed.

I was living in a den of criminals and villains. Everything had this brown fleshy color, like all of our living space was made of some organic thing or like we lived inside this giant organism. Everything was decorated with black and red colors, and I had an understanding that everyone of us was evil. I was found out for wanting to CTB, and this bald muscular/mesomorphic psychiatrist man put me in this little closet thing for observation. I curled up in the fetal position and hid under a blanket. I covered my eyes with it but let my nose and mouth go uncovered so that I could breath better. This murderous girl in her early 20s came into the room, looked at me and scowled and shouted "YOU MAKE ME FEEL SO FUCKING GUILTY". She was holding a knife and stabbed the side of my neck over and over through the blanket. I woke up and was laying in that exact position under my blanket, the side of my neck had this stinging pain and it took me 5 to 10 seconds to realize it wasn't actually happening. My neck continued to have that sensation for a few minutes. My heart raced and I was on edge for a while, then I eventually calmed down and went back to sleep.

Also a few days after, I had a wet dream that took place in what felt like the level "hazy maze cave" from super mario 64.

I had another dream a few months ago. It was easily my favorite this year, but the ending made me feel guilty. It started off with me being at a parade on a paved road that was surrounded by pine trees. This guy who I had met in real life back in February of this year was there, and he approached me. He took me by the wrist and we climbed to the top of a big balloon, and we started jumping from float to float together. I had this fear we wouldn't make the jump but pretty soon he was just flying like a dragon ball z character. We flew back to my room. We laid in bed holding each other, we kissed gripped each other all over. After finishing this, we walked to his car together which was outside my house. There were two other men there and soon we were driving through a busy metropolis. We stopped at a building that said "Sea Side Motel", entered a room together, and I watched these three men shoot over a dozen people. My impression was that this was an organized crime thing. The three men left before me, and I saw a man on the ground who was half alive and begging me for help. I looked to make sure the three men were gone, and I called an ambulance for him. I ran back to the car, and began to panic that the police would trace my call and find out I was involved in the killings. I woke up and felt relieved.

So overall I think my dreams are a combination of romantic desire and traumatic violence. At least the ones I remember.

PS: that was a wonderful OP, and I really enjoy reading about dreams.

 

[Makko]

I had a strange dream last week. I am not sure if it is related to my experience of being attacked while laying in bed.

Do you often have dreams that correlate with past experiences like this? I never dream of anything directly similar to past experiences but the dream situations often evoke sensations I clearly recognize, even if I struggle to identify where from.

Comfy dreams are good dreams for me

Comfy dreams sound nice. All my dreams are so hostile and surreal.

@meetapple I understand, but why Grendel in particular? There are lots of beasties who could fit those descriptions.

 

[meetapple]

@meetapple I understand, but why Grendel in particular? There are lots of beasties who could fit those descriptions

The descriptions you made about your dreams seemed to correspond to the thoughts from the point of view of Grendel in Gardner's novel.

 

[OrcWitch]

Do you often have dreams that correlate with past experiences like this? I never dream of anything directly similar to past experiences but the dream situations often evoke sensations I clearly recognize, even if I struggle to identify where from.

Not usually. I think the way you describe it is more the usual.

The descriptions you made about your dreams seemed to correspond to the thoughts from the point of view of Grendel in Gardner's novel.

I thought you meant Grendel from from Beowulf aha.

 

[UseItOrLoseIt]

If this sounds fairy tale, that's because it is. I'm half mechanical corpse and the other half is fairy tale. Reality is the death and dreaming is the life. There's nothing inbetween. I'm convinced that if anything will make me take the step to suicide, it will be the loss of dreams.

"We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood and go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we have when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin."

Fernando Pessoa

 

[Makko]

 

[Pure]

Have you thought about doing short stories about your fantasies or drawings? I find your experience with daydream fascinating. I wish I had that capability. Would make my life more bearable

 

[Makko]

Have you thought about doing short stories about your fantasies or drawings? I find your experience with daydream fascinating. I wish I had that capability. Would make my life more bearable

I could write a library's worth if only I had any motivation to put effort into sharing myself with others.